Army Apft Risk Assessment Example: Fill & Download for Free

Usually I avoid answering such questions because this one topic is totally controversial and sensitive. I still believe in legacy of great war strategists of old times so my answer may be blunt yet effective if implemented.Much has been written about how the military should improve. Most of these are ideas so grand and so sweeping that they will never see the light of day. While not necessarily impractical in the sense of what’s feasible, they are impractical in the sense that tradition is king in our fighting institutions, defense contractors are lobbying hard for the contemporary environment to remain unchanged and many--if not most--people would rather go with the relatively placid flow than implement the complicated and painful changes almost nobody says aren’t at least worth careful consideration. Other arguments are too philosophical and abstract to lead to specific, identifiable alterations. But there are many smaller, relatively painless changes the military can make in the immediate future.The public will be shocked by the relative ineptitude because they've been led to believe our military is the singularly most dominant and near-infallible force in history. Most combat failures can be attributed to political shortcomings, rather than finding fault with the warfighters. Never mind the poor marksmanship and fitness of a large proportion of the military force.Today’s battles allow us to leverage drones and communication advantages, but if we were sent to close quarters combat with another powerful, professional fighting force, our weaknesses would quickly be exposed. We may still win, but cost in blood and treasure would be immense.My goal here is not to simply point out faults, but to stir an enriching debate on how we can turn weaknesses into strengths.Don’t be afraid to make soldiers miserable on http://occasion.In GEN Hugh Shelton’s (the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer) autobiography, he tells the story of taking command, being told it’s a terrible unit, and that soon he’ll have to go to an intensive training cycle. Wanting to get a good feel for the guys, he tells the commanders that the following Monday they will head out to the field and do various training exercises that culminate in evaluations, and then come back on Thursday. The day they headed to the field there was nasty weather, with punishing downpours. The training began well. The first two days were fairly successful. However, the unit performed horrendously on Wednesday. So, instead of letting them pack it up and head back to garrison on the buses Thursday, he forced them to remain in the field until they could meet the standard for their training event. They didn’t meet the criteria until Saturday. He understood that taking away a portion of their weekend was the price they paid for performing so poorly initially. Furthermore, though they didn’t leave on Thursday, he had the buses wait around until Friday, just in case they passed by then. By Saturday, when they finally passed, the buses were gone. GEN Shelton was unsympathetic. He made the unit march the 30 miles back to garrison, through the night, in the rain, with their equipment. When they went back into the field the following week, they conducted their exercise perfectly on their first attempt. He doesn’t think that was a coincidence.The idea of units kidding themselves about readiness for a hard, uncomfortable battlefield was exemplified by a company’s field training exercise. They had planned for a three-day event and the plan they briefed sounded truly worthwhile and challenging. It’s the type of training companies only plan in earnest maybe three times a year. The unit’s motto even fit their aspirations: Go Hard or Go Home. But then the training commenced. Because it rained in the field, and made them uncomfortable, they decided to let the company come home each night. The third day, because it was cold, they decided to not go to the field at all.The solution is relatively simple. Leaders from the company level on up need to not only plan challenging training, but they need to also enforce it. Training should last, at a minimum, as long as they plan it to be initially. If units fail some training, they should have to retrain and pass it before the commander allows them to come back. Contrary to the fears of many, GEN Shelton proved that in the end, soldiers will respect leaders who genuinely want their units to be the best and push them to perform at an extraordinary level. I have no doubt the soldiers would complain throughout the process, but the pride they’ll have after it’s over, when they can share their arduous trials and laugh about being soaked and know their unit is better than 95% of the military is the type of sensation that constitutes dominant forces.End fiscal year spending deadlines. Let funds roll over. Just cap how much a unit can have on hand at a time so they are forced to http://spend.As the system currently stands, each unit spends moderately throughout the year, and then spends furiously in September. The reason, as all staff and companies are told every year, is that if we don’t spend the money, we won’t get as much the following year, because the military will assume we just don’t need as much. This is stupid. If anything, units should be rewarded for accomplishing their missions without spending all their money. We’re essentially forced to waste tens of thousands each year buying equipment we don’t need/use. Instead, we spend that chunk of money on wish lists. As a 100% taxpayer-funded institution, this strikes me as wrong.Instead, the Department of Defense should allow us to hold on to our funds and spend them when we need to, rather than be beholden to some arbitrary deadline. If we have $10,000 left over come September 30th, let us hold on to it in addition to the new funds we receive. If the only way Big Army can determine whether we need money or not is based on if we are capable of spending it, it’s time to get some new accountants. Any fool can find a way to blow through thousands of dollars. Additionally, by allowing units to rollover their funds, we avoid this annual weeks-long funding gap in October where we’re unable to purchase anything because the new funding hasn’t reached us yet.Don't allow partisan news to play on TVs at gyms, dining facilities, or work http://areas.As an institution that prides itself on answering the call regardless of which political party is in charge, it is foolish and potentially dangerous to allow government buildings to play only one station, and for that station to be partisan. It does not take much research to find evidence that stations like Fox News and MSNBC heavily slant their views to their conservative and liberal viewers, respectively. Indeed, few journalism professors would say the pundits’ claims count as journalism, and it’s easy to find lists of the deliberate lies spewed by the organizations. And yet, we let the men and women in combat uniforms receive their news solely from these sources in public areas. It’s particularly from Fox News, which plays on TVs across post including the gyms, dining areas, workplaces, the Soldier Support Center, and elsewhere. Impressionable 18-year-olds are fed ideas that do not provide a balanced, nuanced take on domestic and global events, fomenting a tinted view of their commander-in-chief and the world. And, if the person watching the TV disagrees with the views, they are left to feel uncomfortable about having a conflicting take on the issue.CNN isn’t perfect, but it’s a demonstrably more accurate source of news than MSNBC or Fox News. If the army thinks a TV is necessary in a building, they should aim to play nonpartisan sources, such as CC, ESPN, CSPAN, etc.Make weight lifting equipment a requirement of every company’s property book.The army (and military, really) places far too much emphasis on muscular endurance. We test for push-ups and sit-ups on the Army Physical Fitness Test, where we do as many as we can correctly perform within two minutes for each exercise. But how does that translate to our combat mission? Do I want a guy beside me who can do 80 push-ups in two minutes, or a guy who can maybe only do 50, but he can drag me out of an overturned vehicle with relative ease? We need to focus on muscular strength significantly more than we currently do. If I were to guess, I’d say no more than 40% of the individuals in the army could bench or squat their bodyweight. That’s a problem. I want someone who can fireman carry me to safety if shrapnel shreds my legs. The problem is that the only way most soldiers can access weights is at the gyms on post. But there are tens of thousands of soldiers on post, and a finite number of dumbbells and plates. Moreover, they have to do the lifting in addition to regular physical training, which isn’t always possible if the soldier wants to spend time with family, take college courses, http://etc.To make training more efficient and effective, it only makes sense to require all units to have a set of workout equipment that aligns with the size of the unit so they can incorporate it in daily physical training. The army reviews these required equipment lists every year. It’s time to make an addition.Similarly, the army tests our fitness by having us run two miles. We should include sprints and agility movements.While a 2-miler may be a decent measure of our health, it poorly translates to combat. How often do you see soldiers running in shorts and a t-shirt, carrying no equipment in combat? I want soldiers who can sprint with equipment if they come under fire. Guys and gals who can jump over low walls. These actions focus much more heavily on anaerobic energy than the 2-mile’s aerobic system, and for that reason, are often neglected entirely. I have always had one of the top three fitness test scores in every unit I’ve been in, but when I came under fire in Afghanistan and had to sprint from boulder to boulder for cover, I felt utterly exhausted, struggling to catch my breath. A combat zone is not where we should be honing out anaerobic fitness.We’ve got to stop pretending that good PR will win wars.Stop selling alcohol on post so cheaply compared to off post. Instead, it should be more expensive. It's a simple way to discourage weekday drinking, drunk driving, being drunk on duty, sexual assaults, bring in more money from higher prices, reduce injuries that occur while drunk, etc. It will also likely lead to lower medical costs in the long run. Why we make it easier for our troops to poison themselves is beyond reason.Stop selling tobacco on post altogether.While it provides zero benefit to the readiness of the military, it reduces the health and therefore combat effectiveness of the force. It also contributes to the skyrocketing medical costs of the military (and therefore increases the tax burden on all taxpayers). This is a no-brainer. Military installations should not provide the means for its own military force to weaken itself cheaply and easily.Everyone complains about unions, but it's just as hard to fire people in the military.I’d think this would be a bigger concern to the public, seeing as how only less than 2% of the population volunteers to serve, and the military is responsible for tiny tasks like fighting and winning the nation’s wars and defending the homeland. There are many freeloaders in the army. Ask any soldier and he/she will certainly be able to identify at least one person who just doesn’t belong. These people skip physical training and proffer lame excuses over several months. The people who never go above and beyond, and often, instead, go just below. They're the ones who complain incessantly but offer no solutions, sowing poor morale in the unit. I have dozens of examples. As a commander, I had a soldier who, on his very first day, was accused of assaulting his girlfriend. He was subsequently accused of stealing several thousands of dollars’ worth of government property and selling it on Craigslist, killing a person’s dog, and threatening other soldiers. All of it seemed overwhelmingly probable and the chain of command unanimously agreed. If he had been an employee of mine in the civilian world, I would have fired him. But, due to army regulations, we instead had to conduct weeks’ worth of inquiry, pulling soldiers away from their jobs to question them, involving the post’s Criminal Investigation Command, and move him to another unit to prevent potential conflicts. All the while, he has less work to do, because he’s restricted from his work area, and he still pulls all the pay and benefits of a soldier, robbing the taxpayers. Cases of soldiers remaining in the military for several months longer than they should because of bureaucratic red tape are not uncommon.The military is not the civilian world. There are several very important differences. In line with them, a commander should be able to suspend soldiers without pay or with reduced pay (enough to afford rent and food) when the evidence is strong enough, and if his higher commander concurs. If the investigation turns up nothing, the soldier should receive back pay. This is one way to prevent forcing taxpayers to support criminals and those who abuse the system.The army needs to reevaluate standards to ensure they're still relevant, and then they should raise the standards.Leaders need to be less concerned with not making mistakes and getting promoted, and far more willing to analyze their unit's shortcomings before it's too late.If a battalion or brigade commander were to ask almost any company commander if the soldiers in the company are highly trained, ready for war, and with high morale, he or she will energetically reply “yes, sir/ma’am!” Of course, this can’t possibly always be true, but who wants to tell their boss— the person who will write their evaluation and therefore play a key role in determining their career—that the company just isn’t very good or motivated? We throw candidness out the window for the sake of saving face. We’d prefer to ship our soldiers off to war unprepared or not properly prepared than to admit we need more time and resources to train. It’s entirely too easy for a company commander to shield their organization and feed lies to their commanders, and sugar coat shortcomings, thus potentially endangering the lives of their subordinates. The primary way battalion commanders track the companies and by accepting the company commander’s word. This should be enough in theory...but in practice, the word of a commander is filtered through concerns of career and perception.Brigade-size elements should have a monthly assessment. They should pull a percentage of each company (giving the company a random by-name list, so the companies can’t just send their superstars) with a one-week heads up, and have those soldiers complete a two-day assessment that measures their basic soldier skills (shooting, moving, and communicating) as well as their fitness (through a physical fitness test and obstacle course on the first day and a six mile ruck march on the second day), and have a written exam that ensures soldiers at least know the basics of their profession. Soldiers would be immune from penalty/retaliation (as dictated by a command order from the brigade commander) from their company commander, but the company commanders would be held accountable for their soldiers’ performance. If one company’s soldiers performed poorly for multiple consecutive months, it would be a strong sign that either the leadership isn’t very good, or the company needs more assistance from battalion. Either way, it helps highlight and address weaknesses, which is what our warrior leaders are too often afraid of confronting, for fear of what they will find. Our warfighters deserve honest assessments from their leaders,The army should assess soldiers on their MOS in order to be promoted.The current system awards points to promote NCOs. The points come from the awards soldiers have earned, their score at the firing range, their APFT score, and a few other categories. The problem is that these measurements, though objective, don’t touch on what many consider the most vital question: can the soldier perform his or her job to a high standard? Soldiers promoted for being fit and memorizing army trivia, yet who are unable to perform their own Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), are certain to draw dismay from their future subordinates, who will distrust their leader’s http://incompetence.As part of the promotion process, an NCO at least one rank higher than the soldier seeking a promotion, of the same MOS, and from another battalion, should examine the soldier’s knowledge and skills within their MOS based on an objective, army-wide, thorough, standardized checklist and timed exam. This forces the soldiers to prepare for promotion in a way that will ultimately make them better at their profession and it gives the NCOs in the army greater latitude to determine who deserves to join their ranks.Stop printing handouts unless absolutely necessary.The staffs in most units (every battalion I’ve been in, at least, and I’ve been in four) freely waste paper and ink as if it’s of no monetary value. We print all 70 slides for meetings, in color, though only a handful apply to our sections/companies. Furthermore, many print only one slide per page. I know many people who will only review documents or slides on paperwork, refusing to look them over digitally. This falls under fraud, waste, and abuse of government resources. One can easily see how the costs of such actions can add up to a tremendous amount when you consider all units in all branches of the military doing this nearly every day. This is taxpayer money that the government could more wisely spend on training, equipment, healthcare, etc.Each person’s account should be limited to printing no more than seven pages at a time. After printing those seven pages, they have to wait a half hour before printing seven more. This will cause people to take pause on whether they really need to print anything. Almost all documents, including Word documents, can be signed digitally, so the need to print so much is unnecessary. It would be cheaper to have each company sign for a tablet so they could look at meeting slides on it, rather than on paper (at 10 cents per sheet, that means 1,000 sheets equals $100. The army could wisely invest in a bulk contract for $100 tablets for every commander to sign for).Allow Soldiers to grow mustaches. Especially during no shave November.This probably seems like a silly point to civilians reading this. Probably too many military leaders as well. But it’s not, really. By army regulation, soldiers are technically allowed to grow mustaches. In practice, though, it’s a little more complicated. Some units don’t merely frown on people with mustaches—they make the soldiers cut it off. Why? Tradition. It has no bearing on warfighting capability, or discipline, or health. Soldiers must remain mustache-less because their leaders have some abstract disagreement with it.For many, this isn’t a major point of contention. But during No Shave November, allow the guys to sprout some facial hair above their upper lip. It may sound weird, but few things raise morale/esprit de corps/camaraderie like growing a ridiculous, hideous mustache with your buddies. Best of all, it’s entirely free for the army. If anything, the army should endorse it so everyone could have a good chuckle when driving around post each November.Require a Battalion-level Energy NCO.This is a simple way to save the military substantial chunks of money. And saving money is about more than just saving money. Downrange, not wasting water or electricity, for instance, means fewer convoys across dangerous terrain to bring more water and fuel, which will likely save dozens of lives and prevent scores of severe injuries. Fewer convoys also means less fuel spent, of course. And the military could redirect all those savings to the dire situations our military faces. It could help pay for medical care, better training, allow units to train more often, purchase better equipment, help with renovating military bases, etc.We already assign NCOs for Equal Opportunity, Sexual Assault/Harassment, hearing conservation, measuring height and weight, and dozens of other duties. An NCO whose additional duty is to emphasize our use of electricity, gas, utilities, etc. would pay high dividends. This person could do stuff like prevent people from turning on the showers two minutes before they step into them. Not let people run the faucet the entire time they’re brushing their teeth. Ensure lights are off in rooms that aren’t occupied and are off at the end of each day. Make sure screen monitors are turned off at the end of each day. Battalions and brigades could have biannual competitions among units on who can save the most money/have lowest bills, and award the winning units an extra day off, a streamer for their guidon, or some other perk.Stop holding brigade and above formations.Think of the thousands of man-hours squandered by a formation in which maybe ten percent of the people can actually see the person talking. Corporate America complains about meetings where maybe ten people are wasting their time. Now picture a formation with thousands of soldiers who already have thousands of their own deadlines/training/counselings/tasks they have to stop so that they can stand outside in neat formations for the sake of an outdated tradition. During All-American Week, for instance, all brigades from the 82nd Airborne form up for a speech. It’s an annual event. Let’s suppose there are five thousand soldiers on the field. They do rehearsals for two days before the actual event, so it’s really three days long. That’s, say, five hours a day for three days for five thousand soldiers. In total, that’s 75,000 work hours almost completely wasted. That’s time we could spend training, developing subordinates, planning future training, and so on.Have professionals or soldiers specially trained to do skin caliper tests for body fat, rather than using the tape test.This would reduce bias in what's reported because someone outside the unit does it, and it’s significantly more accurate. Unlike the tape test, which is only used on people who fall outside height and weight guidelines that are a largely inaccurate way to identify someone as potentially unfit, we should test 100% of the military at least once every three months for excessive body fat. The comparison of accuracy between skin calipers and tape tests is demonstrably one-sided. The military could do the measuring with the same random sample as those who do the monthly random urinalysis. This prevents it from taking any additional time out of the day, and is therefore not an inconvenience.Battalion commanders (with input from the Command Sergeants Major, Company Commanders, and First Sergeants) need to prioritize soldier tasks.There are often several priorities dished out at once, and it can be confusing for the soldiers. Many feel they are in a Catch-22, damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.Battalions should give a small book of laminated pages, held together by one or two metal rings, to each squad leader. This would be affordable. It should contain the topics the battalion expects leaders to cover in hip pocket training (understanding OPORDs, calling in a 9-line Medevac, Basic Rifle Marksmanship, identifying different planes, how to treat a sucking chest wound, how to assess bridges, etc.). It should be simple and should just cover fundamentals. Soldiers should have this stuff pounded in their heads regularly because it's so valuable and perishable. The small book takes the guesswork out of what should be covered in hip pocket training, and it gives them exactly what to cover in a simple cookbook format. It also means squad leaders no longer have an excuse for not having material to train, and therefore improves efficiency.Allow units to control thermostats in buildings.The company I commanded was responsible for one of, if not the, largest buildings run by a company-level unit on Fort Bragg. It was a massive warehouse. And thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars poured into the building to cover the cost of temperature control. The Department of Public Works executed climate management poorly. In the summer, for instance, the air conditioner blasted so cold that the warehouse was often below 60 degrees. We used heaters in our offices and opened all the windows as well as the large garage door in order to let the smoldering North Carolina heat in. It took months of pestering the Department of Public Works on post to raise the temperature in the building, because I had no control over it. This was a silly, inefficient waste of government funds.it -&nbspThis website is for sale! -&nbspcrowdfunding,crowdsourcing Resources and Information. would be far wiser to put a Nest-like thermostat in each building. Commanders of the buildings would be the only ones to control the thermostat, and it would be limited to a certain range (say, 67-72 degrees). At night, the smart thermostat would automatically raise to the highest number in the summer, and drop to the lowest one in the winter, saving the military money. There is no reason to keep a building well-heated at night when nobody is there, for example. Additionally, DPW should have software that alerts them when the costs of heating or cooling a building is significantly outside the range expected for the cubic footage of the building. This might indicate someone left a door open, which a phone call to a unit could easily fix. If costs are consistently outside the acceptable range, and the reason the commander’s fault, this should be reported to the garrison commander so he/she could take proper administrative action.Battalions need to assign mandatory administrative tasks to specific days each month to provide predictability to leaders and allow time to train, rather than scattered out to individual troops each day.These tasks are many. There are around a dozen mandatory annual online training courses for every soldier (composite risk management, law of war, sexual assault and harassment, code of conduct, cyber awareness, and so on). Most people will tell you they want autonomy when picking when soldiers complete training, but this has clearly been ineffective with mandatory training. The problem is finding definitive time and computers to conduct the training, as well as finding the right moments when the companies will be unburdened enough to set aside time to do the training.Battalions should set aside two days each month when they purposefully assign minimal or no taskings to the companies. This gives the companies time to coordinate with the post library and within their units to find enough computers for soldiers to work uninterrupted and knock out the training. A concerted effort like this, in a single month, would likely help 80% or more of the battalion complete the training. Because it’s only required annually, it prevents the unit from kicking the can down the road and making excuses at each training meeting for why the majority of their units still haven’t completed the training.Make each unit's average shooting range scores reportable.Going to the firing range is low on most non-combat units’ list of priorities. I believe this is a mistake. If we are to be the foremost expeditionary force in the world, we need to be able to fire our weapons accurately http://consistently.By posting each unit’s average scores, it shows commanders marksmanship is a priority and encourages them to take their companies to the range more often so they can improve their scores, which makes better war fighters of everyone. Of course, this method would be useful for other metrics as well: APFT scores, land navigation scores, etc. If commanders know it’s easily quantified, could end up hurting or helping them on their annual evaluation, and is highly visible, they will find a way to make the training happen.Have an easily navigable portal to store CONOPS, with searchable tags (range number, task number, event title, etc.).Rather than have officers and staff constantly reinvent the wheel, the military should create a consolidated repository of approved training plans. This would easily save over a hundred thousand man-hours of work each year, allowing units to focus on other, more abstract problems, or fine-tuning their weaknesses.